★★★★☆ When the scam turns real

What the Dead Know

Nghi Vo

Maryse and Vasyl make a living by pretending to communicate with the dead. Vasyl ("Doctor Janiv") plays the professor and Maryse the exotic initiate into an ancient religion that allows her to hover on the threshold of death, where she can hear the dead. They do a gig at a girls' seminary that has fallen on hard times, and something unexpected happens to Maryse. The act is not quite as fake as Maryse and Vasyl thought it was!

Set in a near-reality fantasy world in which students at a girls' seminary learn simple enchantments. It is clearly meant to evoke the early 20th century when spiritualism was all the rage, and Houdini is mentioned.

It's a brief ghost story, more straightforwardly told than I expected from my experience of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills Cycle. The scammers are fun, and it is even more fun to see them caught in their own scam.

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